The ability to stop a light pulse, while completely preserving quantum coherent information encoded in the pulse, has profound implications for classical and quantum information processing See R. Ramaswami, K. N. Sivarajan, Optical Networks: “A Practical Perspective”, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, Calif., 1998; M. D. Lukin, A. Imamoglu, Nature 413, 273 (2001); L. M. Duan, M. D. Lukin, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller, Nature, 414, 413 (2001); M. Fleischhauer, M. D. Lukin, Phys. Rev. A. 65, 022314 (2002); and M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 083901 (2004). Up to now, most experimental demonstrations of stopping light rely upon the use of Electromagnetic Induced Transparency (EIT). In these experiments, a light pulse is stopped by completely or partially transferring the optical information to coherent electronic states See M. D. Lukin, S. F. Yelin, and M. Fleischhauer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4232 (2000); C. Liu, Z. Dutton, C. H. Behroozi, L. V. Hau, Nature 409, 490 (2001); and D. F. Phillips, A. Fleischhauer, A. Mair, R. L. Walsworth, M. D. Lukin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 783 (2001). The use of electronic states, however, severely limits applications, due to the stringent conditions required to maintain electronic coherence.
Since EIT spectrum results from the interference of resonant pathways, it has been recently recognized that similar interference effects also occur in classical systems such as plasma and electric circuits. See S. E. Harris, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 5357 (1996); and A. G. Litvak, M. D. Tokman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 095003 (2002). In particular, EIT-like transmission spectra have been observed in static optical resonators. See D. D. Smith, H. Chang, K. A. Fuller, A. T. Rosenberger, R. W. Boyd, Phys. Rev. A 69, 63804 (2004); L. Maleki, A. B. Matsho, A. A. Savchenkov, V. S. Ilchenko, Opt. Lett. 29, 626 (2004); and W. Suh, Z. Wang, S. Fan, IEEE J. Quantum Electronics (in press). To stop light, however, a static resonator system alone is not sufficient—any such resonator system is fundamentally limited by the delay-bandwidth constraint [see G. Lenz, B. J. Eggleton, C. K. Madsen, R. E. Slusher, IEEE J. Quantum Electronics 37, 525 (2001); and Z. Wang, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. E, 68, 066616 (2003)] and cannot bring the group velocity of an optical pulse to zero. See M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 083901 (2004); and M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, submitted to Phys. Rev. A. Critically, one needs to develop the correct dynamic process that allows the bandwidth of the pulse to be adiabatically compressed to zero. See M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 083901 (2004); and M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, submitted to Phys. Rev. A. Yanik and Fan recently showed one such dynamic process based upon band anticrossing mechanism in Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguides (CROW) See M. F. Yanik, S. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 083901 (2004).